Finesse 3[2023]

Beautifully Maintained and Well Located(en)

A mansion, a lawn, some trees: an unmoved frontal view, 9 minutes long. We hear an off-screen voice. It si the co-director, who commands what goes on in the image. He calls up participants while the other co-director climbs a ladder and holds up a cornet that emits smoke and sparks.

A Chipmunk Celebration(en)

Thanksgiving Day is on the way. Alvin, Simon, and Theodore finish making invitations to send to their relatives and then leave to audition for the town play "Pilgrims Adventures in a New Land". Alvin trys for the role of the Lead, while Simon trys for Lighting and Sound director, and Theodore Costume Designer. However, the Director of the play feels that to properly celebrate the pilgrims story of adventure, the boys should branch out and attempt new positions. As a result, she casts Simon as the Lead, Theodore as Lighting and Sound Director, and Alvin as the Costume Designer to expand their talents.

The Flag of Iron(zh)

Loyal gang member Iron Panther takes the heat for his boss after a dustup with their rivals, only to end up betrayed in this vintage kung fu yarn.

Belle and Sebastian: The Adventure Continues(fr)

September, 1945. Sebastian impatiently waits for the return of his friend Angelina, whom he has not seen for two years. When the plane carrying the young woman to her small village in the Alps is reported to have crashed in the mountains, Sebastian is convinced that Angelina is still alive. Along with his faithful dog Belle, Sebastian embarks on the most dangerous adventure of his life.

The Man on Fire(en)

A psychological story of a loner in lockdown who has been spending all his time in binge watching TV Shows, finds out he has been laid off and he has no source of income left for him.

Little Pond in Main Street(ko)

Street vendors in Korea are almost like a national institution, they are so widespread and relied upon. In Little Pond in Main Street a group of vendors band together to create a community radio station but come into conflict with other groups, as well as the government trying to shut them down.

Panda(fr)

Two teenagers are playing by night in a dirty parking lot. After they are driving on an empty road, they start to tease each other on the way to the sea, but they seem to be too young to drive and the road is a bit strange.

Vow(en)

A man sits in his room feeling lost by God only to find that the devil is at his door.

Avé(bg)

While hitchhiking from Sofia to Ruse, Kamen meets Avé, a 17-year-old runaway girl. With each ride they hitch, Avé invents new identities for them, and her compulsive lies get Kamen deeper and deeper into trouble. Reluctantly drawn into this adventure, Kamen begins to fall in love with the fleeting Avé.

Fight Club Rush 12(en)

Fight Club Rush 12 takes place Saturday, May 7, 2022 with 9 fights at Vasteras Arena in Västerås, Sweden.

Vengayin Maindhan(ta)

A snake charmer sets out to take revenge on the men who raped and killed his ladylove.

Cinderella(fr)

Sergei Prokofiev's setting of the fairy tale "Cinderella" premiered at Moscow's Bolshoi Theater in 1945. In 1986, Rudolf Nureyev, then ballet director of the Paris Opera, choreographed the ballet anew and transposed the story into a private cinema, with sets reminiscent of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis." ARTE shows the Paris Opera performance from December 31, 2018.

Joy in Hong Kong(fr)

Joy flies to Hong Kong, where she meets her best friend Alain. With him, she visits the hottest districts of the city. She is kidnapped and imprisoned in a brothel and has to pay a high price for her freedom.

Projota - AMADMOL (A Milenar Arte de Meter o Louco)(pt)

Spider-Man!(es)

After being bitten by a radioactive spider, Peter Parker uses his new powers to locate and catch the killer of his beloved Uncle Ben. First of the three short films made by "The Trauma Group" (Naxo Fiol, Chema Ponze, Gabi Tintorer) on the Marvel character between 1993 and 1996. This is the first film made in Spain, shot without more budget than the spent in the costume of the hero (60,000 pesetas of 1993) and shot with a video-8 camera of the time, so the image and the sound, together with the passage of time make the quality of both very poor. Halfway between the experimental, psychotronic cinema and avant-garde cinema, it´s a very extravagant version of the character, softened in the second incursion of the Trauma Group in the character: "Peter Parker is Spider-Man" (1996), closer than this to the original comic.

Insane Fight Club II - This Time It’s Personal(en)

Insane Fight Club is back. This year the boys are taking their unique form of entertainment to England as they stage fight nights in Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool and Newcastle.

The Crocodiles: All for One(de)

“The Crocodiles” are back and they are in for quite an adventure! Frank is seriously hurt and needs a liver donation. In order to save him, the gang needs to get Frank’s brother out of prison. Their plan is risky and the stakes are high.

Chihayafuru: Part II(ja)

After successfully won the Tokyo qualifying tournament, Chihaya and her friends are set to go on to the nationals. As they prepare, Chihaya is faced with new personal issues as her childhood friend and inspiration, Arata, has announced that he has quit competitive karuta. Not only that, but a new rival emerges in the reigning female champion karuta player, Shinobu Wakamiya, a karuta prodigy who became the nation's and the world's greatest female karuta player as a 9th grader. All of this forces Chihaya to reexamine her love of the game in the midst of preparing for one of the biggest tournaments of the year.

Fate(en)

Serial killers have plagued the American landscape for decades, committing gruesome atrocities, and providing some tough cases for criminal investigators to crack. Two detectives are on the trail of a bizarre murderer intent on slaughtering his victims, then using them as real-life puppets in a tale that he is trying to tell.

My Life Without Me(en)

A fatally ill mother with only two months to live creates a list of things she wants to do before she dies without telling her family of her illness.

Open Hearts(da)

Cecilie and Joachim are about to get married when a freak car accident leaves Joachim disabled, throwing their lives into a spin. The driver of the other car, Marie, and her family don’t get off lightly, either. Her husband Niels works in the hospital where he meets Cecilie and falls madly in love with her.

Italian for Beginners(da)

Several lonely hearts in a semi-provincial suburb of a town in Denmark use a beginner's course in Italian as the platform to meet the romance of their lives. The film, which unspools the connections and family drama shared between the students, complies with several aesthetic principles of Dogme 95 movement.

The Secret Life of Words(en)

A solitary nurse bonds with a badly burned patient who survived an accident on an oil rig.

Lost in Translation(en)

Two lost souls visiting Tokyo -- the young, neglected wife of a photographer and a washed-up movie star shooting a TV commercial -- find an odd solace and pensive freedom to be real in each other's company, away from their lives in America.

Darken(en)

Darken is set in a bizarre, mysterious, and violent unknown world with danger and death around every corner. After a young woman is accosted by a dying warrior in the middle of the street, a bizarre incantation propels her into the realm of Darken - a violent prison-like world of labyrinthine rooms, interconnected with no apparent rhyme or reason and no way of escape. As she fights for survival within this brutal place, she finds allies who are rebelling against the rule of a self-appointed religious despot who demands allegiance to an all-powerful god called "Mother Darken." Eve and her allies must fight with everything they have if they are to have any hope of surviving the horrors Darken has in store for them.

Keepers of the Fire(en)

For half of a millennium, First Nations women have been at the forefront of aboriginal peoples' resistance to cultural assimilation. Today, Native women are still fighting for the survival of their cultures and their peoples--in the rain forest and the city, in the courts and the legislatures, in the Longhouse and the media. Keepers of the Fire profiles Canada's Native 'warrior women' who are protecting and defending their land, their culture and their people in the time-honoured tradition of their foremothers.

Alice, Darling(en)

Pushed to the breaking point by Simon, her psychologically abusive boyfriend, Alice becomes an unwitting participant in an intervention staged by her two closest friends while on vacation. As she rediscovers the essence of herself and gains some much-needed perspective, she slowly starts to fray the cords of codependency that bind her. However, Simon's vengeance is as inevitable as it is shattering, and once unleashed, it tests her strength, her courage, and the bonds of deep-rooted friendships.

Annalyn(sv)

Agnes is not satisfied with her life. She wants a change, but her relationship with her single parent father and dominant girlfriend inhibit her to do something about it. When the father introduces his new wife, Annalyn, everything changes. The same-aged Filipino stepmother helps Agnes see a new path. Soon emerges something that no one could have foreseen.

Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself(da)

The strange comedy film of two close brothers; one, Wilbur, who wants to kill himself, and the other, Harbour, who tries to prevent this. When their father dies leaving them his bookstore they meet a woman who makes their lives a bit better yet with a bit more trouble as well.

Boys Don't Cry(en)

A young transgender man explores his gender identity and searches for love in rural Nebraska.

Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations(de)

Starting with a long and lyrical overture, evoking the origins of the Olympic Games in ancient Greece, Riefenstahl covers twenty-one athletic events in the first half of this two-part love letter to the human body and spirit, culminating with the marathon, where Jesse Owens became the first track and field athlete to win four gold medals in a single Olympics.

Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty(de)

Part two of Leni Riefenstahl's monumental examination of the 1938 Olympic Games, the cameras leave the main stadium and venture into the many halls and fields deployed for such sports as fencing, polo, cycling, and the modern pentathlon, which was won by American Glenn Morris.

The Piano(en)

When an arranged marriage brings Ada and her spirited daughter to the wilderness of nineteenth-century New Zealand, she finds herself locked in a battle of wills with both her controlling husband and a rugged frontiersman to whom she develops a forbidden attraction.

Little Miss Sunshine(en)

A family loaded with quirky, colorful characters piles into an old van and road trips to California for little Olive to compete in a beauty pageant.

Flame(en)

The 1970s in the former Rhodesia, today Zimbabwe: The native people is going against the white suppressors. As the war reaches the most distant villages as well the two friends Florence and Nyasha join the fighters and assume new names: Flame and Liberty. But the war is not as easy as they thought...

Antonia's Line(nl)

After World War II, Antonia and her daughter, Danielle, go back to their Dutch hometown, where Antonia's late mother has bestowed a small farm upon her. There, Antonia settles down and joins a tightly-knit but unusual community. Those around her include quirky friend Crooked Finger, would-be suitor Bas and, eventually for Antonia, a granddaughter and great-granddaughter who help create a strong family of empowered women.

In Free Fall(en)

The space of the junkyard allows various ‘crash’ narratives to unfold, with the stories of actual crashes and the remnants and afterlife of these machines becoming metaphors for economic decline. This is an investigation of planes as they are parked during the economic downturn, stored and recycled, revealing unexpected connections between economy, violence and spectacle, finding perfect example in the form of the Boeing 4X-JYI, an aircraft first acquired by film director Howard Hughes for TWA, which was subsequently flown by the Israeli Airforce before finding its way to the Californian desert to be blown up for the Hollywood blockbuster Speed. Through intertwined narratives of people, planes and places Steyerl reveals cycles of capitalism incorporating and adapting to the changing status of the commodity, but also points at a horizon beyond this endless repetition.

Yevdokiya(ru)

On the outskirts of the provincial town, Yevdokim and Yevdokiya live, raising foster children. Yevdokim works at a factory, Yevdokiya is a housewife. The family seems to be safe and happy: the only trouble is that Yevdokiya cannot forget the love of her youth. This Yevdokim cannot stand and offers Yevdokiya freedom, while he will remain with the children. But all these contradictions are drowned in mutual love for children and for each other.

How the Lion Cub and the Turtle Sang a Song(ru)

The Tortoise composed a song and the Lion cub learnt it by heart and they sang it together.